The new blog can be found on http://digitaldialog.wordpress.com

The idea about Project Bergman is to launch a food site with the use of social media only. The site itself needs to be good, and I still have a few modifications to be done before the launch this fall.

I will shortly send my (last) request to rent a coder to get the final enhancement done. I need the site to be a bit more social than it is to day, to do more about the customer login, their site and how they can rate and share each others recipes. I actually found a website that was spot on (in functionality) of what I am building my self, but no worries. I guess it´s room for more than one social food site. And this one wasn´t even Norwegian.

For the launch of Bergman´s Food I was thinking about some sort of competition that is relevant to the content of the site. And if I could create a viral video to support that competition I would assume that the impact would be  better. Either a video or some sort of cool flash game that can be sent via mail, facebook etc.

For my part the video or animation complicates the viral campaign. Maybe I can post a project request for a work like this at an unknown site?

We´ll see :-)

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When you discover one social media tool, you are bound to find another. I have to admit that when I started this blog a month ago, I lacked knowledge of social media. I used Facebook, but that was about it.

Everyday I discover a new cool tool, and a couple of days ago I stumbled upon Zemanta.

I pretty cool feature that I plugged in to my Firefox. What Zemanta does is to find links, tags, pictures and videos of what you write about. It makes blogging a lot less stressful.

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Apparently there is a 48 hour window for you to create success. A 48 hour audition to prove that your campaign will pass your network, your friends network and finally, if it is a success, viral across network after network after network.

Had a very exciting social media meeting today. The way they presented the process of planning, preparing and launching a social media campaign was really brilliant. I now truly value my networks, but wished they were 10 times the size :-)

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I have to admit, I pulled off a dirty trick yesterday to convert readers to my blog. But just as a test (it will not happen again).

I usually or sometimes put some info about my blog post in the “What are you doing?” field on Facebook.
Yesterday I wrote the following line: Sven-Erik annonserer muligens et mystisk drap i dagens blogg…?” /”Sven-Erik are probably announcing a mysterious murder in today’s blog…?” Not that it has anything to do with my food site, but I thought that people might be interested  and wondering if I wrote a novel or something.

Just from the Facebook entry my blog stats boosted by 300% compared to the last week.

This is not a long term strategy, but it shows how important a good heading/subject line is. Transfer this to a banner ad or an email marketing subject line and you see that it matters.

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Friends, family and colleagues have seen the site and I have received a lot of valuable feedback. I even held my own private focus group with some friends.

And finally, I have my own thoughts and ideas of how the current site should be improved in order to be as ready as possible for the big launch. Ideally I should have an official launch date just to set pressure on myself (there´s no one else to blame why things are taking so much time). For my defense, this is my hobby, and if you combine your hobby with a full time job in GE, 2 kids, owner of my own email marketing company, friends etc. Time is among your most valuable goods.

Still, to make it official: The launch of my brand new social food site will be in September.

Not that I will use this idea for my site, but an easy and plausible way of getting online success is to monitor search phrases from google. Visit google.com/zeitgeist and check out hot trends regarding what people search.

Focus on one of the most popular words and create a package that you can sell. Create a website in no time, and start using google adwords, optimize your site for organic search and ta-da, you have created your first online business  success story.

Todays top search on google is Arlen Specter, a senator in the US.

OK, back to reality. I talked to a former co-worker that is now principal on a college located in Stavanger. My idea was to use students to help me create a youtube movie to create some buz around my site. Sadly they didn´t have a film class.

I tried to read about social media strategy for a newbe website. Not sure if I found what I was looking for, but I came up with some ideas.

The launch of the site must happen in several different networks at the exact same time. I also need a carrot for those who wants to join my site. Something that someone or many might want to write about or tell their friends about.

What really works online are funny stuff and competitions. Silly but true. I have an idea of a fun competition that can both appeal to youtube fans, be useful as a facebook group site,  and maybe create a virus on email. I will also really on my competition hitting the right people (I guess mainly my friends) so that they will use their network to market the competition and in the end the site.

Creating the virus effect is difficult, and I might need some sort of collaboration with other societies. Maybe ask some media students to create a film for youtube.

For my next task it´s time to plan how to use social media for marketing my site. Guess I need to read some sites before I start with this. Any suggestions?

I went to a seminar the other day. They had a case from Universal Studios that wanted to create a Harry Potter world in their theme park. The person leading the marketing of the Harry Potter World had a huge budget but her strategy was to tell 7 people about their plans to build this new world.

Well, 7 bloggers to more precise. 7 of the worlds busiest and addicted Harry Potter bloggers. She invited all of them for an exclusive webcast at midnight. Just imagine if Harry Potter is all you think about, you run a successful blog with lots of readers, and now finally you have the scoop of your lifetime.

As success stories usually end (in sucess) the 7 bloggers generated more than 350.000.000 visitis, comments, links, refferals what have you.

I would guess my site wouldn´t generate as much if I went to the 7 biggest food blogging sites, but on the other hand…. eh no. Probably not…

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I wanted to test the value of using friends in a focus group, so I invited three of my friends on dinner and showed them my site.
For a qualitative study this is a very good approach. Even though they are biased in the sense that they are your friends, this approach is at least a lot better than not having a focus group at all.

When I presented my site I immediately got the question; “Why should I use this site and not MatPrat?” Friends can definitely be your harshest critics.

For me this question alone indicated two things.
1) I need to redesign my site so that my message is clearer and more easy to understand. I have a banner at the top of my site sharing the idea and the uniqueness of this site, but none of them had seen it.

2) I also knew that I had done something right. Matprat is about “opplysningskontoret for kjøtt og fisk” giving recipes to the consumers. My site is for consumers to share their recipes with their friends and the rest of the world. And finally. I lure my visitors with what we apparently all seek: Our 15 minutes of fame… I´ll come back to this in a later post.

But the greatest findings was when we tested out user friendliness. Within 30 minutes we had come up with a really cool application to the site that shouldn´t be to hard to build, but would definitely improve the quality of my site.

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